1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to apparatus for playing selected recordings and more particularly to apparatus of this kind which a customer may operate to play and/or record on his own magnetic tape cartridge or cassette selected audio and/or video recordings stored in the apparatus.
2. Prior Art
The stereophonic magnetic tape cartridge player is now widely used in the home and in automobiles. The owners of cartridge magnetic tape players seem inclined to favor a particular recording or group of recordings for only a relatively short time. To continually replace these recordings has two non-advantageous aspects where the owner is not a collector of the recorded music on magnetic tape cartridges. One is the expanding storage requirements for these no longer used tapes and the other is the current relatively high cost of pre-recorded cartridges.
It is therefore desirable that when one has tired of the numbers on a particular cartridge, they be replaceable at low cost and with music of the owner's choice.
One way in which this can be accomplished relatively inexpensively is to pre-record the cartridges with the new material, erasing the old recording in the process.
To accomplish this ordinarily would require a relatively costly array of apparatus for the average consumer. But if he could make such recordings at low cost, say fifty cents or twenty-five cents per number recorded, he would be inclined to make many substitutions replacing old with more recent recordings on his own cartridge, thus obtaining what he wants and being able to eliminate unwanted numbers.
Up to the present time, the above recording problem has existed only in the field of audio, i.e. musical, recordings. However, the introduction of magnetic video tape cassette or cartridge viewing systems for home use promises to create a similar problem, except, of course, for the much higher cost of video recording equipment. This high cost makes it even more impractical than with audio recording for the individual consumer to own the necessary recording equipment to make video recordings.